Moving to a small Andalucian white village in Spain is quite a change from living in the capital of a Northern European country.
Laugh at my sometimes futile efforts and follow my observations and musings over the spanish way of life in a small village where life is still dictated by the harvest time of olives and almonds.
Becoming an expat close to the Costa del Sol can be interesting from an observers point of view.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

IKEA Sevilla trip

Went to Sevilla in the weekend on one of those combined business / pleasure trips. The business was the big IKEA and the pleasure was well, walking around the beautiful city that is Seville.

I must say that I cannot wait until the IKEA opens in Malaga. They have been talking about it for ages, and it kept being delayed, but now it does seem to be happening. Apparently its going to be located quite close to Malaga Airport in one of the large industrial areas, and expected to open in mid 2007. Wonder what a lot of the local furniture shops are going to think about it? I mean, there are so many people buying properties in Spain and obviously they need to furnish them. A lot of companies offer whole furniture packages with fixed prices for e.g. 2 or 3 bedroom apartments which is ideal for property buyers in a hurry to get their apartment ready and without the time to sift around all the shops on the Costa del Sol. But IKEA does fill a huge gap in the market down here. 1. Its cheap 2. You might actually want some of their stuff in your home.

Especially the second part has been a huge problem for me. How can I put it? Literally there are so many ugly things down here. I dont think the people in Andalucia has very good taste. Everytime I look in my "Casa y Campo" magazine I see wonderful house after wonderful house, but all the cool and stylish shops are always located in Madrid or Barcelona and not down here in peasant Andalucia. Bugger.

Spent the whole trip driving back from IKEA munching on all the goodies we had gotten in their swedish shop. Daim (or Dime if you prefer), pepporkakor (ginger biscuits), gelly fish, Kanel gifler (cinnamon rolls) and a lot more I dont want to be reminded of. Sufficient to say that my nausea grew increasingly with each bump in the road after I was done with my little feast.